Root Exploit Found in Kernel on Exynos Devices

How much hard you try to make something good, there will always be something you haven’t done correctly (in other words, a hole). That’s the story with Samsung. Namely, XDA Forum Member alephzain has discovered a hole in the kernels of devices running on Samsung Exynos 4 Series chips that can be exploited to gain root access. That’s because the device /dev/exynos-mem is Read/Write for all users, thus enabling apps to take advantage of it and use it for good or malicious purposes. On the one side, this is somewhat good news, because the affected devices can be rooted without the use of Odin, but on the other hand, it opens a new gateway to hackers that can use this dangerous bug for malicious purposes.

Of course, this is not something that cannot be solved. The bright minds over at XDA have already discovered a way to fill this gap, but that also means sacrificing the camera functionality. It’s also worth notifying that this exploit has been reported to Samsung, so this bug may eventually be fixed by them.

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